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PODCAST

Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those

music music commentary

All Episodes

39:03

The Buskers’ Hall of Fame – from Moondog and Billy...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/10

Louis Armstrong, Wild Man Fischer, Irving Berlin and Lucinda Williams all started out as buskers and Cary Baker’s ‘Down On The Corner’ traces the romance and influence of street players from Ancient Rome via Chicago’s Maxwell Street to Elvis Costello outside the CBS conference and beyond. Cary, David and Mark chuck coins in the conversational hat, among them …… the turban and rollerblades stagewear of Harry Perry aka “the Skating Sikh”.… Blind Arvella Gray who took up busking because of a gun

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38:09

Who should follow John Lydon with a Spoken Word...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/09/09

We applied dynamic pricing to this week’s news and various stories trebled in value, among them …… further adventures in the Oasis ticket fiasco.… the greatest band name ever.… the only rock star born under Adolf Hitler.… Marianne Faithfull? Ian Anderson? Elvis Costello? Musicians you’d rather hear talk than play.… rock stars telling jokes.… “if it isn’t hard to get it’s not worth having.”… is hype generated from above or below?... the return of old-school analogue: David Gilmour’s Golden Ticket.…

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33:36

The Oasis reunion – feuds, cash, symbolism and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/31

David, Mark and our token bucket-hatted parka monkey Alex tackle the return of Oasis, its grip on the public imagination and why they’re the biggest band of the last 30 years, which includes …… the Gallaghers’ mixed fortunes since 2009.… who won the battle of the underdogs.… “Noel has a thousand buttons, Liam has a thousand fingers”.… why the ‘90s was just like the ‘60s, a golden age of British pop culture.… no whizz-bangs required, no props, no choreography, no lasers, no extras … why Oasis is the

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44:15

Are comedians more competitive than rock stars?

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/28

In a concerted effort to put the world to rights, David and Mark ruminate upon the following …… Kylie and the Wiggles? Canned Heat and the Chipmunks? Real or invented pop star/childrens’ entertainer collaborations... the charmed life of Greg Kihn.… will the BBC have any archive left if it keeps cancelling presenters?… why Inside Llewyn Davis works and so many other biopics fail.… the full story of the statement Springsteen made with the Born To Run cover shoot.… Stewart Lee’s long-running beef with

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42:01

One-word rock star mimicry, bands who shouldn’t...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/19

With David asleep on a French sun-lounger beneath a copy of Summer Lightning, Alex and Mark pour themselves a cold drink and consider …… the great ska floor-fillers.… taking kids to rock concerts.… the fate of all bands: “as musicianship improves, vocals decline”.… left-field Beatles songs reworked as nursery rhymes.… why 2-Tone had pop’s “triple threat” (and the genius of Mike Barson).… of the five big acts with all original members intact, only one should reform.… how “Tay-gating” became a thing.…

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34:04

The extraordinary story of Arthur Lee, Love and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/15

Love’s official biographer John Einarson tells David Hepworth the star-crossed tale of the band who made the least psychedelic album of the psychedelic era. Their conversation takes in:….Lee’s growing up between Memphis and L.A., dealing with the problems of looking more like Johnny Mathis than Otis Redding.….how being indulged as a youngster by his family made him a tyrant as a band leader.….growing up with a prodigious musical talent but without the mastery of a single instrument.….refusing to put

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38:59

Buddy Holly airlines and the inimitable Bob Dylan

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/12

As Mark Ellen goes shrimping at Frinton David Hepworth and Alex Gold links hands across the Atlantic to discuss:….why a quick turn around Mount Hood in a Cessna should never be confused with pleasure….why all the highly-rated albums are actually over-rated.….why Timothee Chalamet has no hope of being able to capture more than one facet of Bob Dylan….the name of the only music-related location in the whole of Oxford Street which has managed to survive the great hollowing-out….why there really is no

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50:25

“Pop music is 80 per cent about hair”, remaking...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/04

A small Pastis, a game of boules and a conversation putting the rock and roll world to rights, which this week includes …… why Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger worked so well on the small screen.…Elvin Pelvin on the Bilko Show and how Elvis was modelled on Tony Curtis.… An American Werewolf In London, The Birds, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Don’t Look Now, Nightmare On Elm Street and other old movies being rebooted.… how Patti Smith based an entire career on looking like Keith Richards in 1972 and

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31:59

Queen, Bowie and other residents of Rockfield Studios...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/08/02

Rockfield is a converted farmhouse in the Welsh countryside where, for over 50 years, bands have lived while recording. In the ‘70s Tiffany Murray’s mum was the in-house cook, filling Motorhead to the brim with boeuf bourguignon and Black Sabbath with salmon en croute. Her touching memoir My Family And Other Rock Stars – hailed as “a rock and roll Cider With Rosie” – sees a succession of visiting bands though the wide eyes of a child and in a wholly new light - Freddie Mercury is the man who “smelt

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45:56

57 years of Fleetwood Mac: author Mark Blake's fond...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/31

Mark Blake calls Dreams: the Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac a “mosaic biography”, their almost six-decade saga presented as a series of enthralling short stories with titles like ‘Mick Fleetwood’s Great Epiphany’ and ‘Rumours: A Doomed Romance in Six Acts’. It opens in fact with a “cast of characters”, the 18 one-time members, as if dramatis personae in a play, a play that gets more outlandish and dumbfounding with every new discovery and much of it based on his interviews and meetings with most of

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35:14

Ron Sexsmith doesn’t need a teleprompter. He can do...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/30

Beloved Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, old pal of the pod, is touring the UK in November, two of the nights at the Palladium, and looks back here at the first shows he saw and played himself. Which delights include …… what you learn playing Canadian bars aged 16.…seeing Elton John in a 75,000-seater stadium when he was 12.… early memories of the Kinks and the Who.… why every gig is “a mini-battle”.… Bob Dylan’s courage to do what the crowd don’t expect.… original fans in middle-age:

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52:36

Without John Mayall … no Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Status...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/29

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction ……watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night.… Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79.… the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks.… is Cerrone’s Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer?… lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon Hiseman, Keef Hartley,

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52:54

Backstage at Live Aid, the first Knebworth and bands...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/15

Employing controversial VAR technology, we re-examine various events on the rock and roll pitch and suggest a new perspective. Those key moments include …… the “bucolic frolic” at Knebworth 50 years ago as seen from 100 yards away just past the burger van and featuring Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van Morrison, the Doobie Brothers and the Allman Brothers Band. And a stark naked Jesus.… when did the Age of Spectacle begin?… how Two-Way Family Favourites helped start Live Aid.…

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37:34

Dylan Jones – Clegg’s women, Hague’s pints and “the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/07/03

We’ve known Dylan since the days he was editing i-D, Arena and GQ and he’s been a regular on our podcasts talking about his books on Live Aid, the ‘80s, David Bowie and Wichita Lineman. And he’s finally written his memoir, These Foolish Things, full of insights and stories about glam rock, punk, the Blitz, four decades of the magazine world and the people he interviewed and shepherded into awards shows. You’ll hear the delightful clang of the odd dropped name here, along with …… Shirley MacLaine,

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43:46

The wit and charisma of Kate Bush by Graeme Thomson:...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/18

Graeme is an old friend of the podcast. We’ve talked to him in the past about his books on Phil Lynott and John Martyn. ‘Under The Ivy: the Life And Music of Kate Bush’ first appeared in 2010, and was revised in 2015 after her Before the Dawn concerts and it’s now been updated again as, despite no new music or public appearances, her worldwide reputation has rocketed through the roof. We look back here at various key points in the story including ...… why the way she made records was ahead of its

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41:18

For the love of Françoise Hardy, Ben Sidran and the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/17

Among the logs tossed on the conversational bonfire this week to combat mid-June’s British winter you’ll find …… ‘I Managed Van Morrison’ and other films screaming to be made.… how it feels to watch someone play from the best seat in the house.… Françoise Hardy, her unsmiling photos and legions of besotted male admirers (ie us and everyone else).… the time she met Dylan and Nick Drake.… Juliette Greco, Edith Piaf and the handful of French stars who made it across the Channel.…the joy of small

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34:04

Jon Savage - Dusty’s wig, Bowie’s bombshell and how...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/09

“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that’s when I got interested.” Jon’s an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England’s Dreaming’ and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded’ among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture 1955-1979’ which looks at five particular moments and the pivotal people in the mix at the time. We couldn’t

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37:38

“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/08

Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and figures out how they made records so universally popular and which still move him to tears 50 years later. It’s also the best example of any book we’ve

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39:49

the Architect of Mod: how Peter Meaden restyled and...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/06

Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and the Birth of a British Subculture', and the NME's published extract in 1978 paved the way for the Mod

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47:11

Great album trilogies, suing Madonna and "the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2024/06/03

This week the conversational Super-Trouper of Enquiry lights up the following …... why care when "rock critics get it wrong"?... the dreadful death of the Allman brothers' dad.... is there any other branch of entertainment where you can be two hours late onstage?... has any show got worse reviews than Eddie Izzard's one-woman Hamlet?... the unlikely tale of how Iron Butterfly changed the course of Atlantic Records.... three, the magic number: the accidental album trilogies of Scott Walker, Steely

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109 results

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